Dr Elaine Lynn-Ee Ho1 ,Dr Tuen Yi Chiu4
1National University Of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore, 4Lingnan University, Hong Kong, People’s Republic of China
Drawing on Bailey et al’s (2018) argument on the “relational life course”, this paper investigates the spatial and temporal registers of governmentality manifested during transnational ageing and through life course negotiations. We investigate how grandparenting migrants from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) who are on temporary visas in Singapore and Sydney envision ageing across the life course when their family units extend across borders through their children’s migration. Family reunification restrictions in Australia and Singapore, as well as the paucity of state-sponsored social protection for temporary older migrants like them, compel them to devise various spatial strategies to “age-well-in-place” in China if their children remain abroad and when they are unable to travel regularly should frailty set in later in the life course . The family biographies they trace to the past and articulate for possible futures reflect the conduct of self and in relation to an/other. This paper is informed by interviews with 72 PRC grandparenting migrants in Singapore (n=31) and Sydney (n=42). The data for this paper is part of a multi-component project called “TRACE” (Transnational Relations and Care Ethics).
Biography
Elaine Lynn-Ee Ho is Associate Professor at the Department of Geography and Senior Research Fellow at the Asia Research Institute (ARI), National University of Singapore. Her research addresses how citizenship is changing as a result of multi-directional migration in the Asia-Pacific. She currently researches ageing and migration through TRACE (Principal Investigator).